“Apple shipped 2.8 million of its Apple Watch wearables in the third quarter of this year, accounting for nearly half the total market for smartwatches,” Steve Ranger reports for ZDNet. “Canalys calculated that total smartwatch shipments stood at 6.1 million for the quarter – an increase of 60 percent on last year.”

“These new figures are a very different to those published by IDC last month which said that total smartwatch shipments for the third quart of 2016 only reached 2.7 million units – down 51.6 percent from the 5.6 million units shipped in the same quarter in 2015,” Ranger reports. “In contrast IDC said Apple only managed to ship 1.1 million smartwatches in the quarter, a big drop from the 3.9 million shipped in the year-ago quarter.”

MacDailyNews Take: Since Apple does not release Apple Watch unit sales figures for competitive reasons, all of these estimates are just that, estimates or, in other words, educated guesses. Some are more educated than others.

“But Canalys said “despite reports to the contrary” Apple Watch shipments compared favourably to those in the third quarter of 2015, the first full quarter after the original Apple Watch’s launch,” Ranger reports. “However, it’s not all good news for Apple: while the new models are selling well, there are still unsold first-generation Apple Watches in the channel, according to Canalys analyst Daniel Matte, and much will depend on how sales go in the fourth quarter.”

I thought the whole watch idea was just silly and had no interest in it. I received one as a gift and tried it out for awhile.
I use it all the time, it’s great and I am shocked!I have that senior problem off CRS …. can’t remember stuff. The watch reminds me to take my pills on time, get up and exercise, take a minute to breathe and lower my pulse. It takes the place of a bedside clock since by just touching it, it tells me the time then turns off. The battery lasts the whole day with much to spare. Since I take off my watch at night anyway, I charge it then with my iPhone.
This is no silly gadget. It makes my life much easier and healthier. Tom to it all off, this is the original one and not the 2nd version!

MDN, if Apple is so sly not to reveal the sales figures for its latest product line, they why does it proudly report the figures for the Mac and iOS product lines? You know, the ones that actually make money?

Oh. I guess maybe I just answered my own question.

The Apple Watch, if it ever does make any money, is a distraction. I blame the goddamned Watch and the absurd Apple Dream Car boondoggle for wasting the resources needed to maintain and expand the much neglected Mac lineups. Apple has no excuses — it’s just bad product management to let your core business grow stale while instead hawking $10k jewelry and rose gold fashion accessories.